On the brink of death, Berks man rebounds and recovers from lengthy COVID battle

Sep. 12—Andi Kelly likes to call her son her miracle child.

"I'm not going to argue with her," Cory Heckman said with a smile.

Not many people would. Not after finding out what he's been through.

Cory spent the first half of 2022 in hospitals, locked in a life-or-death battle against COVID-19.

It was a fight that, for a time, Cory looked like he would lose. One that had his family planning his funeral.

Those plans, thankfully, were not needed. Cory was able to rebound and recover, and in June the 31-year-old was able to return to his Exeter Township home — where he lives with his mom and his stepfather, Mike Kelly — after spending a total of 149 days hospitalized.

Cory recently sat down with the Reading Eagle to share his story.

"It was a tad bit on the crazy side," Cory said with a chuckle.

An unwelcome Christmas gift

Cory doesn't get sick very often.

While he did deal with asthma as a child — one attack had sent him to the hospital — he had grown out of it. His only other experience with a hospital was after he was bitten by a snake in Texas.

His mom said he's always been the healthiest of her children. That's why when he developed a cough and started losing his appetite in December it was cause for concern.

"It was not just like a normal cough," Andi said. "It was very harsh."

Cory said his mind didn't immediately go to COVID when he started feeling ill. He figured it was just a cold that would simply come and go.

There wasn't much opportunity for Cory to catch COVID, his mom said. He is diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, which places him on the autism spectrum, and he lives a pretty isolated life.

He doesn't leave the house much, and that was particularly true during the pandemic, she said.

Still, Andi said she was concerned about the infectious disease that had dominated headlines since March of 2020. Enough so that she tried to get Cory vaccinated.

But when she took him to get his shot, she was told that he needed a photo ID to get jabbed. Cory, who doesn't drive, doesn't have one.

"He never needed one for anything," Andi said.

Andi said she was in the process of getting Cory an ID and vaccination when he started to get sick — likely picking up COVID from his niece, who got it at school. And his illness quickly put that task on the back burner.

Cory's condition deteriorated quickly, so much so that his parents took him to the emergency room at Reading Hospital on Dec. 22. But at that time Berks County was facing a major spike in COVID cases, and the emergency room was packed.

After waiting for eight hours, they decided to go home.

On Dec. 29, Cory was back at the hospital. This time his parents weren't with him, having traveled to North Carolina for Mike's work.

"As soon as I got the phone call we came home," Andi said.

Cory was taken by a family member to a hospital in Pottsville, where he was quickly admitted and placed in intensive care. Most of the experience is a blank for him.

"I pretty much just remember walking through the doors with the nurse and that's it," he said.

Cory remained in intensive care for about a week, then was moved to the hospital's COVID unit. He stayed there for a couple of weeks before being rushed back to intensive care.

Andi said that because of his Asperger's Cory had difficulty expressing how he was feeling. Doctors and nurses told him to say something if he was having trouble breathing, but he remained silent despite struggling for air.

It wasn't until his breathing nearly stopped altogether that it became clear how dire his situation was.

"I watched him not be able to breathe and the doctors all rushed in," Andi said. "They rushed him to the ICU."

A tracheotomy was performed on Cory, and he was hooked up to a ventilator to allow him to breathe, Andi said. A feeding tube was inserted.

Andi said she was so shaken by what was happening to Cory that she refused to leave the hospital for weeks.

"It was panic, total panic," she said. "I couldn't sleep, I just wanted to be there. I lived there 24-7, I was living out of my car.

"If anything happened I wanted to be right there."

A brush with death

On a Saturday in late March, Andi got a phone call she will never forget.

"A doctor told me it was time to let him go," she said, pausing to wipe away tears. "You see on TV when parents get news like that and just fall over? That's what happened. I walked into my sister's room, gave her the phone and collapsed.

"I just kept thinking, 'This is not happening.'"

Cory's condition wasn't improving, and it appeared his battle with COVID was lost. Andi decided to wait until that Wednesday to make the decision; that way Cory's loved ones would have a chance to say goodbye.

In the meantime, she and the rest of Cory's family started planning his funeral. He was to be cremated, and a celebration of life ceremony would by held on April 2, his 31st birthday.

A miraculous recovery

Cory's family did end up holding a celebration on April 2, but it wasn't to honor his memory.

It was to celebrate him turning 31, very much alive.

Doctors discovered Cory's struggles were due to his ventilator malfunctioning, according to Andi. Once he was hooked up to a new one, his condition immediately started improving.

In fact, he got better so quickly that he actually remembers his birthday celebration — at least a piece of it.

"I remember a balloon on April 2 that was a controller," he said, recalling a video game controller balloon nurses gave him. "I was still really tired, but I was able to open my eyes for a second. I was foggy at first, but things became more and more clear."

Over the next few weeks, Cory began making the slow climb back to health. After being confined to a hospital bed for more than three months and suffering a serious toll on his body from COVID and his treatment, he had to relearn how to do pretty much everything.

He had to relearn how to talk and how to eat and how to walk.

The toughest part, he said, was the eating.

"The food was just bad," he said. "It wasn't real, it was all mashed."

Cory forced down the thick, viscous slime, dreaming the whole time about a hot, cheesy pizza. He also dreamed about being able to play video games and his guitar, or maybe cooking up some of his special sausage gravy.

In late April, Cory was moved to Reading Hospital Rehabilitation at Wyomissing where his condition continued to improve. He remained there for 35 days.

And then, on May 26, he was officially discharged.

"It was very nice," Cory said about the moment he walked with the help of a cane out of the facility's doors 40 feet to an awaiting car.

"I freaked out," Andi said, revealing that Cory had been practicing walking with a cane without her knowledge. "I have goosebumps just thinking about it."

Continuing the fight

Cory is thrilled to have his hospital days behind him, even if he still doesn't feel exactly like his old self.

He has suffered permanent lung damage from his experience with COVID, which has left him with limited stamina. He still needs oxygen at night or when he leaves the house.

He also has some periodic shaking in his left arm.

But all of that makes for a lot better situation than what he was dealing with a few months ago.

"I'm slowly but surely getting to where I used to be," he said.

As for his reflection on his lengthy fight with COVID, Cory says it's hard for him to say much because he remembers so little of it. He does recall parts of it being terrifying, he said, and other parts being frustrating or panic-inducing.

Overall, he said he's shocked he's handled it as well as he has, particularly the hospital food part of it.

"I'm surprised I haven't gone mad," he said. "You would have thought the food would have done it to me."